UPDATE: A very hectic few weeks

As some of you may have noticed, I have taken a few weeks from blogging properly and even Instagram has taken a back seat. That’s because the last three weeks have seen visits from my parents and also a two-week holiday visit from my boyfriend, neither of which were particularly conducive to blogging or even training as hard as I might normally.

That’s okay though, because it allowed me to take a step back from it all. Whilst I’ve been living here in Chile, I’ve been trying so hard to keep up with things in exactly the same way I would do if I were at home – exercising, training, blogging, and eating Paleo. But I don’t think that’s how I should have gone about things, especially with my eating.

I set up this blog to document my Paleo diet, but I’ve now decided to transition away from eating Paleo into more “normal” foods. I’m writing this whilst eating the first bowl of pasta I think I’ve cooked for myself in over 2 years, and I had oats for breakfast. But strangely enough, I don’t feel “guilty” or have any wish to restrict myself – it’s what my body needs.

I do like the idea of eating Paleo, especially as it promotes a whole-foods approach to eating in which I had to prepare everything from scratch and therefore learnt a lot about cooking. But it just isn’t sustainable for me right now in Chile, whilst training, and on a very limited budget. I have only really been following it half-heartedly since arriving in this country and having to face up to the difficulties in sourcing many of the ingredients I found so normal and necessary in England.

Instead, this blog turned into what I think it should have been in the first place – a place for me to log my workouts, discuss difficulties in training and (very) occasionally sharing recipes. I feel like I have so much more to share about my running and about balanced eating, and I don’t want to pretend like I am still eating Paleo 100% of the time. Obviously, I learned a lot whilst cooking every day for myself and I will still be eating whole foods, but just trying to get a bit more freedom into my life.

And talking now about my training, I thought it would be good to just do a little check-in of how I’m doing, what I’ve been up to recently, and what I’ve got ahead!

The two weeks that my boyfriend was here, I barely did what I would call “normal” exercise but we still stayed amazingly active. I wasn’t in the place I would have wanted to be in 3 weeks out of my 48km trail race, but I wouldn’t have swapped these last two weeks for anything in the world. I decided that the 21 days in between the time he left and my trail race was time to maximise my strength and make sure I’m completely ready.

After my boyfriend left last Friday, I did an 8-mile run and a 4-mile run on Saturday and Sunday just to get my body used to running again. I’ve been hiking, biking, canoeing and climbing recently, but only went on 3 runs in the 2 weeks that he was visiting me.

This week is an “intense” week before I start my taper. However, ironically, my “intense” week started with a rest day on Monday after a very busy work-weekend! I still managed 5 miles of walking though. Tuesday was meant to be a long run day, but it turned into a slow 10km, and then Wednesday I went back to the gym for the first time in a couple of weeks and lifted but also did 10km of intervals.

Friday was my long run! 16 miles up and down a mountain… and it was actually hell. I seemed to have completely lost motivation, I felt really really ill, and I just couldn’t work out what was wrong with me. Part of it might be that my phone has decided to no longer pair with my headphones so I now have no access to music or podcasts whilst I run, but also it’s been 30*C or higher here every day and the heat is definitely sapping my strength. But I got it done (albeit v v slowly) and I can say COMPLETED!

Today is just a 4-mile shake-out run up a hill near me for some hill intervals. Then, tomorrow I’m off on another trail run (about 12 miles) that might turn into more of a hike depending on the heat and how I’m feeling. I’ll let you know! That will take me up to 44 miles for the week – not too shabby!

It does sound like my training has taken a bit of a step back, and to be honest that’s absolutely fine with me. I don’t have a time goal for my trail race – I just want to finish, and I have 13 hours to do that. 13 hours to do 30 miles / 48km *should* be fine! In a way, it’s been good to have some terrible runs lately because I’ve had to face up to my demons more than I would in any normal run.

I am linking up with MissSippinPiddlin and HoHoRuns for their Weekly Wrap, which is a great way of supporting a load of ladies doing this very strange thing called fitness. Check it out on their blogs, it’s always an interesting read!

How has your training been lately? Any motivation ideas for running without music? What do you do when it gets into summer and it seems too hot to train?

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About me!

Hi, I’m Izzy! I’m a 20 year-old student at the University of Cambridge, focussed on being the fittest and healthiest possible. To find out more about my journey, click the ABOUT ME link at the top of the page. Otherwise, enjoy exploring my blog!